Digital media storage has become inexpensive. Coupled with the widespread use of image capturing devices such as digital cameras and smartphones, inexpensive media storage enables people to accumulate easily thousands of pictures, at very low cost. This creates much clutter, with a large proportion of the stored images often presenting little or no interest to the user. There is a need to help curate large image collections, e.g., to filter out the images that likely present little interest to the user and/or others.
A somewhat related problem is that of choosing which images to capture from an ongoing scene in the first place. Many modern digital cameras can capture several high resolution images per second. Which of the images captured in a short period of time (such as less than ten seconds) should be saved? If they are all saved, a large number of highly redundant images may result. There is a need therefore to help select the images for shuttering, that is, select images for capture using electronic or even a mechanical shutter, and for saving images in non-transitory storage media.